This study of Platonov's prose has its origins in my doctoral dissertation (Cornell University, 1984), though the basic premises of that text have here been significantly reworked and expanded upon. Segments of Chapter Two appeared in somewhat different form as “On the Genesis of Platonov's Literary Style in the Voronež period,” Russian Literature 23–4 (1988): 367–86. A substantial portion of Chapter Four appeared as “Writing Against Matter: On the Language of Andrej Platonov's Kotlovan,” Slavic and East European Journal 3 (1987): 370–87.

I am indebted to the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and the Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad program for support that enabled me to spend ten months conducting research in Moscow and Leningrad in 1985–1986. For invaluable assistance I am grateful to the Central State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow (TsGALI), and regret only that their delay in admitting me and their veto on my access to many documents made our contact so brief. I am also grateful to the staffs of the reading rooms to which I was assigned in the Lenin Library and the Institute for Scientific Information in the Social Sciences (INION), both in Moscow, and in the Library of the Academy of Sciences (BAN) in Leningrad.